For the moment the obscure sounding Volgna-Gath come enshrouded in as much mystery as is lurking within the pea-soup fog billowing out of my window on this cold autumnal morning. They come armed with a devilish LaVeyan mission statement proclaiming “There is a beast in man that needs to be exercised, not exorcised” Apart from this there is no more I am able to tell you about this UK black metal entity spawned recently on an unsuspecting world.
It is left to their 5 track demo to do the talking and a sinister rumbling leads into opening track ‘Rising.’ Maudlin guitar tones somewhat dreamily enrich with a melody that is pure post blackened metal and has overtones of bands such as Fen, Agalloch, Alcest et al about it drawing you in to its folds and soothing. However this is not what you should expect stylistically throughout as halfway through the track explodes into bruising and coruscating riffs driving it away. Vocals gurgle out sounding alien and vengeful, they at first don’t seem to work and take a bit of getting used to but as you are barraged by the full power of the instrumentation their form makes some sort of demonic sense. With everything together I am reminded a bit of modern day Enslaved and the melody here really is strong in that sense. A blackened punk bounce sees ‘Empty World’ suddenly going into a passage of clean almost worshipful vocals but you get the idea that this is summons to a very black mass and as the gurgling spew of the sermon proper and the jaunty roughshod instrumentation ploughs out it’s enough to make you want to throw the horns in reverence. There is lots going on beneath this and dare I say a certain mad dog English eccentricity about it all. The melody is really deep and vocal diversity strong. Self-titled Volgna-Gath goes for the throat in a much more orthodox fashion, bristling with hateful antagonism and fury as the drums militantly blast away. Some skewed harmonics and backing chants add stygian atmosphere and one feels like they are deep underground intruding on a sinister mass in a deconsecrated temple hidden for aeons. ‘Kill The Priest’ makes no bones about what is laid before us on the sacrificial altar. Listen carefully here and an interesting bit of historical pomp dwells in the depths of the music. There is no discernable break between tracks and everything flows faultlessly along allowing you to enjoy this in one seamless movement. As final track ‘Humankind’ proffers more clean Ghost like croons airily flowing up to the heavens and then descending into the very bowels of hell, galloping with the stench of brimstone around them towards conclusion it is obvious that this is a new entity with plenty of interesting ideas.
Volgna-Gath strike as a multi-faceted hydra, cut off one head another will quickly sprout and this ritualistic and timeless sounding demo has much to enjoy about it. You can discover it for yourself as they have made it free to download at the link below, press it and buckle up for a devilish dark journey!
(7.5/10 Pete Woods)
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